| As a co-founder of one of the first in-person programs, I can say that just by asking this question we have come a long way in just the past 3 years! But as the field grows it becomes harder for a prospective student to make the right choice for the next step in the career. I understand that you're asking for opinions we might have on which programs to take seriously, but I feel that narrowly focusing on that can create a flamewar that won't be productive for you as you talk with friends and others about which program to apply to. I'll at least start by pointing out some great external resources to help you verify your own opinions, learn about new programs, and help people make an informed decision. - Quora (http://quora.com) is a great resource to get information about which programming bootcamp to choose from. Yes, you can get subjective advice from people inside these bootcamps, but just searching "programming bootcamp" will send you through a wormhole of information. - If you don't feel Quora provides you with enough objective data, there are a rising number of bootcamp review sites popping up. From our experience with these sites, I can say that Switch (switchup.org) and CourseReport (coursereport.com) have their stuff together. I will also add that there are other options besides just 3-month programming bootcamps. There are even more intense programming bootcamps like the Turing School of Software & Design (http://turing.io/) or gSchool (http://www.galvanize.it/school/), and 30 Weeks (https://www.30weeks.com/), a new design school created by Google. Taking objective cap off We have also created a 9-month program in Chicago called Starter School (http://starterschool.com), which not only teaches web development, but web design, product development, and entrepreneurship. If you want to get a graduate's perspective of this program, I encourage you to read this post (https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3771-jack-mallers-from-dropou...). Putting objective cap back on Final cautionary note: If prospective students have the goal of getting a "validation with a credential" the chances of being disappointed at the end of the program are extremely high. These programs were created in direct retaliation to that premise. It's all about what you learn, what you build, and what type of person you are. The more serious you are about your education, the better chances you have of being successful after you are done with your bootcamp education. |